To please your friends, tell them what they already know

From www.eurekalert.org

Association for Psychological Science

We love to tell friends and family about experiences we've had and they haven't--from exotic vacations to celebrity sightings--but new research suggests that these stories don't thrill them quite as much as we imagine. A series of studies published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that both speakers and listeners expect novel stories to be bigger crowd pleasers, but that listeners end up enjoying familiar stories more.

"Conversation is the most common of all human social activities, and doing it well requires that we know what our conversation partners most want to hear," says psychological scientist Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University. "Speakers think listeners will most enjoy hearing stories about experiences that the listeners have not themselves had, but our studies suggest that speakers are wrong."

The research emerged out of some real-life observations shared by Gilbert and co-authors Gus Cooney (Harvard University) and Timothy D. Wilson (University of Virginia):

To see the entire article click https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-02/afps-tpy021317.php